


Demon Shadows

by Merfilly



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Fear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a dose of Crane's handiwork, Helena faces her fears, while the rest of the team tries to save her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demon Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrswoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrswoman/gifts).



Barbara roused when the shifting of the bed grew too frequent and restless to ignore. She pushed up on her elbows, turning her head to see the woman next to her, biting her lip to see sweat and tears marring the sleeping visage. Evidently, the anti-toxin had not been as effective as they first hoped, and Barbara reached for her comm gear to quietly contact Dinah in the other room, glad she had decided to stay out of paranoid worry.

"Dinah, bring a blood kit, and that second dose. She's feverish and starting to thrash with the nightmares," Barbara said softly into the comm-gear.

"Hmm...oh, yes. Right there, Babs," came the sleepy but worried reply.

It didn't take long before Dinah was there, still in gear from having fallen asleep in it, her hair just slightly a mess. "Hey," she said softly to Barbara before going to the other side of the bed, frowning. "She's definitely showing signs of it."

"Can you get the blood? And give her the next dose?" Barbara asked, keeping her tone neutral.

Dinah nodded, before doing just that, using careful, firm pressure to keep Helena from jerking her arm free. "I'll go get this analyzed, sweetie," Dinah said, once she had the samples secured. "We'll see if something more effective can't be made to help her. B can just get over me invading his sanctum." The sharp little smile she gave at that almost made Barbara feel sorry for Bruce. But only almost.

"I'll move the laptop closer, and set it up for secure transmission, though if you have to manufacture something... I probably won't have the ingredients." Barbara sighed softly.

Dinah moved and hugged her in, tight and warm. "Don't worry, Barbara. Bruce will have it, or he'll find it for us. If he can't, then we'll go to the League. Or the JSA. But the Scarecrow is _not_ going to take her from us."

They both looked at the teacher by day, vigilante by night, and prayed she was strong enough to resist her fears until Dinah found something.

`~`~`~`~`

Helena ran alongside Sal, fighting to not show how winded the run had made her. She wanted to prove she was strong enough to do this, to survive his training. She had her life mapped out, to a point. That the map was painted in blood hardly mattered to her.

When she just knew her lungs and legs were going to give way, she reached to the side, fingers searching for Sal's arm to get his attention. She touched nothing, making her turn her head to look, finding nothing but skies turning crimson in the distance.

It made her stop running, confused by her solitary condition. No sooner had she stopped than the ground beneath her feet turned to luxuriant grass, and headstones bearing her family's names surrounded her. She backed away, bewildered, and then gasped when an iron-strong grip wrapped around her ankle.

Looking down, she saw skeletal fingers there, stretching up from a bony arm coming out of the turf of her father's grave.

"Helena..." The name was in her father's voice, stretched into deeply haunting tones. "Helena, you belong here!"

The other graves began to split open, skeletal remains draped in the rags of their burial clothing coming for Helena to pull her into their embrace.

Her scream resounded in her own ears, incapable of resisting the fate she had so narrowly escaped as a child.

`~`~`~`~`

Barbara flinched at the strangled sound coming from the sweating woman. This dose had calmed the thrashing, but Helena's fever was still high.

"What demons did he awaken, Hel?" she asked softly, knowing there would be no answer for her.

`~`~`~`~`

The mountain was quiet. Helena sat cross-legged at one point of a triangle. Vic, minus his mask, sat at the second, while Richard sat at the third.

She was restless, aching to return to the streets, to pursue her vengeance. Her wounds were healed enough. She could do what was needed.

Richard spoke, eyes still closed in attempted meditation. "If you cannot purge your quest of the thirst for violence, you will end the task still seeking to drink deeply of it."

"I have a goal. It ends then." Helena was certain of this.

"Who will you be then?" Vic questioned her.

Helena had no answer for him.

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah paced behind Bruce in the Cave, waiting and hoping that her friend held on just a little longer.

"Crane's work?" Bruce asked skeptically, looking toward her from the microscope.

"Told you that," Dinah said with a lilt of aggravation in her tone.

Bruce looked back into the microscope. "Looks like he's got access to Isley's research, then. The toxins are more like self-replicating spores this time."

Dinah came to his side, wanting to see. He gave way, knowing that while she wasn't a trained biologist of any kind, she'd had enough experience to see the difference in cell shape and propagation. She drew back from the microscope after a long moment, then looked very thoughtful. "What if we combine the anti-toxin with a massive dose of antihistamine?" she suggested.

Bruce actually let his lips quirk upward. "I still don't see how anyone falls for the blonde."

She leaned in against him, kissing his cheek. "I don't know; you've forgotten a time or two." She then stepped back to let him get to work on building the combination drug for Helena.

`~`~`~`~`

There was an urban wasteland all around Helena this time. The sounds of life could be made out, but they were the sounds she had come to hate. She heard distant screams of pain and terror, she could hear the sounds of breaking glass, and she could hear the laughter and revving of engines that came with gangs enforcing their control of their areas. Gunfire rang out a time or two, and the smell of the air was one of a foul miasma, trash and decomposing organic material all around, under the tainted sea-smell.

She started to walk, clad in her costume, a heavier crossbow with sharply pointed quarrels in hand. It was Gotham, and it wasn't. It was Gotham twisted into one huge Crime Alley, and the only people she saw were the gangs she loathed and hated, all in larger groups than she would have thought possible.

She didn't see any children, no women, no men just moving in normal traffic patterns. The gangs began to notice her, though, and she felt them fall in, following her. It made her paranoid, made her finger twitch at the release of her crossbow. She moved toward home, toward where she would be safe, only to find the streets unfamiliar with the graffiti and ruined, fire-bombed wrecks of what should have been familiar landmarks.

"Why? What is this?"

 _"The price of your vengeance,"_ came a voice from all around, and yet from nowhere but within. _"Violence begets violence, and in the end, only the violent remain."_

 **"NO!"** Helena did not want this, wanted only to set things right. Isn't that all she had done? She had faced choices, made some bad ones, but her mission now was to teach and to help curtail the violence, working as Oracle's right hand. She was educated enough to to know the theory of escalation, but this horrid nightscape before her just wasn't possible!

Her steps faltered, and the growing mob closed in, cat-calls and threats ringing out. She weighed the crossbow, raising it to defend herself, and knew that this was as much the problem as a symptom when the first quarrel shot away from her to tear through a boy who looked too much like one of her students.

Using such tools only added to the growing threats, and never got to the root of it. Yet, the tools were a part of her, deep into her core. Could she change the fate she had set in the blood of her family?

`~`~`~`~`

Barbara looked up as Dinah came in nearly with the dawn. She let her hope show on her face, and Dinah nodded cautiously.

"Pointy Ears found the difference, and we think we've cooked up a good sauce to hit it with," the blonde told her friend.

"Did he have words over it?" Barbara asked as Dinah slipped to where she could administer the new antitoxin.

"It's B. He's a self-righteous, overbearing, egotistical son of a dog... but he's also very human and sends his hope that this works." Dinah uncapped the syringe, tested to be certain the air was out, and then administered it to the woman who had begun to shake in her sleep.

"He did not," Barbara challenged that last.

"He said, and I quote, 'report to me on how well it works'," Dinah said in a dead-on impression of the Bat-voice.

"Okay, yeah, that's Batspeak for 'get better'," Barbara conceded.

"Honey, you're exhausted. I napped while the Bat made his magic guano, so let me take watch, and you slip on to the guest bed," Dinah said firmly, plopping down on the side of the bed.

"But...."

"No buts but your butt under covers," Dinah told her in the tone of a mother-hen. It worked on Roy, Ollie, Mia, Connor, and mostly on Lian. Babs was no match, conceding the care of her lover to the other vigilante.

`~`~`~`~`

There was a dark sky, barely lit by the glow of the distant lights below against the smog-covered night. The ground upon which she stood was the gravelly tar of an old roof, distant hum of the air units the more constant noise than the traffic in the streets under her lofty position. Helena looked all around, aware this time that it had to be a dream, and wondering what new menace would rise up from her subconscious.

"You maim."

The voice was known. Sanctimonious and preachy, as if only _he_ got to set the rules of breaking the law to uphold justice.

"You are reckless."

Helena's eyes searched the darkness, seeking out every shadow, looking for the nemesis of her career as a vigilante.

"You will never be a true hero."

"You cannot judge me! You weren't there! You didn't see it! You didn't suffer the lies! You never knew what it was to survive!"

A pointed shadow stretched out from the air units, but then it resolved into a faceless man, a man whose voice was not the one judging her.

"But do you know that for certain?" Vic questioned her.

Helena folded in a little on herself. She shook her head. "You're dead."

"Are you sure you're not?" Vic asked. She almost smiled, for the familiarity of it. Still, there was a monster lurking here somewhere, and she thought about his words.

"I cannot be certain he has not been in my shoes. He represents a path chosen that I might have."

"Perhaps."

Helena shook her head, refusing to be dissuaded. "And I know I am alive. Physically. I've been working on the spiritual part for a few years now, actually. I'm not the same woman who worked with you, Vic, all that time ago."

"Are you sure?"

The woman known as the Huntress, a woman who had played off her mafia ties to the point of building a properly written hierarchy of the Gotham families for Batman, who had been on the League, and who faced apathetic students on a daily basis, fixed the faceless man with a firm, confidant gaze. "I'm certain. Because I chose to go forward. I chose to let my life tangle with others. I am not dead anymore; I let myself impact other lives in ways beyond the bolts I fire and the blows I throw. I am Helena Bertinelli, survivor; I am Huntress, the avenger, and I am just Helena, to those that I finally let matter in my life."

The mystery man stepped backwards, toward the shadows, but she knew his body language. She knew he was letting her see the smile his mask hid.

"Stay safe, Hel. I really can wait to see you again."

"No offense, Vic, but I can really wait on that catch-up conversation." Helena let her smile chase him into nothingness, and knew she had found peace with her demons. Now all she had to do was make it back to the land of the waking.

And then she was so going to kick Scarecrow's butt the next time he broke out of Arkham.

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah knew the tide had been turned when the shivering and shaking broke with a rash of fresh sweat, and she tucked the covers in around Helena to keep her from getting chilled in the aftermath of the fever. She looked at the clock, seeing it was nearly a decent hour on the west coast, and dropped Oliver a text. She didn't want any of them worrying, but Barbara had needed her far more than her rowdy household. Helena's health was just too important.

She saw that Helena was settling into restful sleep, and sighed softly in hopeful relief. Dealing with the after effects of whatever Crane had found to frighten Helena would be rough on both her friends, Dinah knew. But she also knew that Helena was stubbornly determined, Barbara was keenly interested, and they had both learned the cost of not speaking when it mattered.

The couple would be fine, and their team would only be stronger in the end.

`~`~`~`~`

Helena did not have the shadowed, haunted look to her eyes as she woke, Barbara noted that afternoon, glancing from her laptop to the stirring woman. She quickly ended her discussion with Mister Terrific, with a request that he try and filter some of the cyber requests for assistance to appropriate persons on the teams. He was more than willing, she noted, even as she was shutting the screen down over the keyboard to focus on her lover.

"Hi."

Helena gave Barbara her attention at that simple word, wrapped in worry and love and a false bravado that everything had been fine. She glanced briefly at the sun filtering in, and then back to Barbara. "You'd been telling me I needed more sleep," she started off, not liking how hoarse her voice was, or the foggy remembrance of revisiting way too much of her personal history. Her words did make Babs smile though, breaking the façade into something more genuine to see. Helena read that, saw the relief, saw the old worry, and saw the love they shared come up out of the mask Oracle wore. They would be fine, Helena knew, but at the same time, she knew Barbara would want more details than she already had.

Helena felt an eerie calm settle into her soul, much as if she had just come from confession, and knew it was time, that she could finally share all of her past. While Barbara knew the facts of it, there were many emotional shades hanging throughout the events of those dry bullet points that Helena had never revealed.

"Helena?" Barbara asked softly, seeing the way her lover's eyes had swept over an invisible checklist without further commentary.

Helena waved a hand at the laptop, sitting close at hand. "Think they can deal without Oracle tonight?" she asked softly.

Barbara nodded emphatically. "They will. Let me get you some soup and water, and me a lunch. Then I'm all yours for the rest of the day and night," she promised.

"That sounds great," Helena told her, forcing herself to not slam shut those doors that Crane's serum had opened. Barbara deserved to know her fears, deserved to know what had shaped her actions over the years. After all, hadn't they already discussed the Joker and those events? Only fair to return demon for demon.

`~`~`~`~`

It had been a long talk, not without tears, not without indignation, and then there had been quite a bit of cuddling while they compared the events that had shaped them both.

Now, with Barbara's head on the pillows, and Helena laid on her side, her own head pillowed on Barbara's rock-hard abs, they were resting in the emotional aftermath of the long talk. Somewhere, just barely, a siren could be heard wailing, but neither woman let it stir the blood or the guilt.

Not tonight. Tonight had seen too many scars pricked into bleeding. Tonight was for them to rest and take strength and comfort from each other.

"Does _his_ approval matter to you now?" Barbara asked in the peace between them, many long heartbeats later.

"Does it to you?" Helena countered, before smiling faintly. "I did want it. Knowing Dinah pinned his ears back over me, even when she was dealing with the fall out of Light and Sue... it meant so much, and gave me hope. But now? After that all this, after thinking about my life, my decisions?" She sighed softly. "I just want him to leave me to do what I do best, and always be there to remind me where the line is, in case I ever have reason to forget it. It's what he does for us all. I might not agree with his methods, or how stringently he draws that line for himself, but he is our conscience. He's just not the epitome of who I want to be."

Barbara nodded a little, then shifted her head to get the pillow just a little more comfortably under her neck. "I understand that. I thought... once... that if he didn't approve, that I was, useless, failing, wrong at all of it." She laughed bitterly. "Even watching what Nightwing went through to get his approval didn't make that it wasn't true sink in. But, it's not so important, and I can see that. I still want it, you know, but more in that way of I hope Dad approves of what we do, down deep, even if he is too much a cop to ever admit it."

Helena snorted; out of all the reasons that dating Barbara seemed surreal, that little fact of dating the Commissioner's daughter might have topped them all. "Yeah. You want to know he approves, because he is the Daddy Bat, as I heard Canary call him once, but at the same time, we both know who we are, and why we are where we are now. It's not the same path he walked, so we might have learned different lessons, or chose a different path when faced with similar circumstances." Helena, moved and took Barbara's hand, looking up at her. "He's not always right, either."

"No." Barbara smiled, tightening her fingers in Helena's. "And we're not all just copies of him."

"Hell no."

The vehement denial, and just the peace they had found led to an outbreak of giggles, until Helena moved up to the pillows for kissing and things that did not involve any demons at all.


End file.
